June 8, 2022

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE REFERENCE:

“However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature [maturing], yet not the wisdom of this age in which we live nor of the rulers of this age which they seek to enable because all of these come to nothing.” (1 Corinthians 2.6)

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2.12)

TODAY’S REFLECTION:

If we accept the summation that we are called to live as One in the “Age of Wisdom” which is also the “Age of the Church,” let us consider caveat which Paul proposes to the community of faith in Corinth. The caveat of receiving the Spirit which is of God and from God is that we may know the things that have been “freely” given us. Free and freedom in the culture and climate of the 21st Century is sadly misunderstood. Because of this misunderstanding, “free and freedom” are diluted and denuded of responsibility and accountability. It seems that the direction many would desire for freedom to take is an unwise one. Wisdom, authentic wisdom, speaks of both responsibility and accountability. Why is God seen as wise? Is it not because God motivated by responsibility and guarded by accountability? His very being and nature being that of love is evidence of both responsibility and accountability. He is not “free” to be anything else than God. To deny His own nature would be blasphemous and disastrous. It is He who has made us. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. It is His Spirit which not only has created us (at God’s command) but holds us together knitting every aspect of our lives into one.

But, today, we see the call for freedom to be an invitation to stand apart from God, even denying the existence of God. Just saying so, does not make it so. The existence of God will remain an eternal truth and presence regardless of what many, sadly many, think. In this nation, the move to dismantle the Constitution (and by default the Bill of Rights) is an act of treason motivated by the enemy of wisdom. The root of all evil is folly. P.T. Barnum is said to have coined the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute.” He may or may not have done so. He was not the first to use that phrase to describe the folly of people who are willing to “pay anything to believe something untrue is true.” Does that include our very own souls? Apparently it does or will. Jesus taught that “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin.” As the Holy Spirit is the provider and embodiment of wisdom as directed by God, to deny that truth would deny that we have life not by our own making.

To think the life we choose is an act of creation is folly. It is the folly made evident first in the Garden of Eden where the Serpent offered his version of “a sucker born every minute.” Satan asked Eve, “God didn’t really say YOU would die, did He?” Actually, the answer was “No, He didn’t.” God, according to the Genesis 2 creation story, told Adam that if he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil he would die. Adam, having this knowledge, then was supposed to be wise, responsibile and accountable, and pass on the knowledge then to all who would follow him. Adam’s first “follower” was Eve. She was created from Adam by the Holy Spirit of God after this admonition. We can choose whether Adam told her or not or whether she ignored him or not. The fact is that Adam watched as Eve was led logically to be “free.” Except, the freedom which comes from succumbing to temptation and being unwise leads to death.

There was another tree in the Garden which was available to them and it was the Tree of Life. I do not know what the fruit of that tree was. It may have been a different kind of apple. It may have been peach, cherry, banana or olive. It really doesn’t matter any more than it becames a legality that the apple is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is what we decide to do with what we have been given that matters. And the fruit of wisdom, obedience to God and fully trusting in Him, comes by the promised Spirit of Jesus Christ. He was borne by a tree. He exercised wisdom to acknowledge that God said “He would surely die.” He would surely die so that we might surely live. The way back into the Garden is closed to us. The hope of eating of the Tree of Life is not even a fleeting hope. The price of disobedience was eternal life and death. From dust we came to dust we shall return…unless we partake of the fruit of the Tree of Calvary. It is the fruit of the Spirit which gives us the true quality of life in this world and in the next. Those who eat of that Tree of Life shall never hunger nor thirst. This is the Good News we are called to embody and broadcast. Doing so demonstrates our wisdom. Accepting our responsibility as Tree-bearers (being equally yoked to Christ and one another) and our decision to accept eternal accountability (God’s judgment based on our fealty to acknowledging Jesus as the Christ) puts to shame the folly of the lie that says “you can be free of God.” Without God there is no life. Without Jesus there is no hope for life. Without the Holy Spirit there is no understanding of the life we have been given freely which comes with a cost- obedience to the Way, the Truth and the Life. Let us be wise, mighty ones of God. Let’s exercise our eternal right to be God’s people, the sheep of His pasture.

OUR CALL TO PRAYER: Father God, maker of Heaven and earth, we bow before You and give thanks. You are seeking to make us wise in the ways of Your Kingdom so that we may accomplish the good which You have made us for on earth. Our hope is that this will truly be as close to “our Father’s world” as possible. We will not be able to accomplish this without the blessing of Your Holy Spirit. Form and shape in us the awareness of “this age” we are meant to live in. Help us to be better in producing it and promoting it over “this age” we now live in. To You will be all glory and honor given in Jesus’ name. AMEN.